Once a collection of somehow pronounceable letters has been adopted into popular enough usage in any language, with understandable meaning, then I think it is reasonable to define it as a “word”.
Especially in American English, which is such a wild amalgamation of so many other languages and cultural concepts.

They are being used as english words, so they are.
The word “handy” is technically not a German word, but it is being used in German, with a very different meaning from its original.

Yes. I consider the Greek alphabet the grandparents of the current English alphabet.

Your first paragraph justifies the acceptance of the names of these letters as part of English. As far as Wordle goes, there are a lot of words, like cliché or aloha, that have been absorbed into English from foreign languages and whose structure differs from words with Anglo Saxon or Latin roots.

I don’t think you have one iota of a chance at redoing Wordle, since most of your examples don’t fit the five letter structure.

The English spelling of the letter names is a genuine noun. it is the name of the letter; the alternative is to use the actual letter. Nothing more to say on this – Ω

I don’t like crossword puzzles because the clues always seem non-deterministic and it’s just not my style of puzzle. So this being a ‘cheat’ for crosswords is not all that on my mind. I would argue that crossword puzzles cheat in a million other far more substantial ways.

But yeah, English is a hybrid language. It evolved in the context of being influenced from Greek, Latin, Nordic, Celtic, French, German and more as different cultures conquered or settled in the English Isles at various times in history. It’s part of why the language is so chaotic with rules and sounds that are wildly inconsistent from word to word.

I would say they have become English words, yes. Some have gone further than others. Delta has become a full-fledged geographical term and in the context of “river delta” has gone far beyond being simply “the name of a letter”. In fact, almost all of them have a meaning beyond “the name of a letter” as they have been adopted as terms in physics and mathematics. Interestingly, these Greek letter names are themselves borrowings from Phoenician words that refer to the form of the letter (as they all originated as pictographs). Cf. alpha, beta, gamma with the Hebrew names for the corresponding letters: aleph, beth, gimel.

I count them, though I can see your point about their inclusion in Wordle. Are the pronunciation of these letters how they’re pronounced in Greek? Would a Greek person say “Al – Fah?” or do they have their own version of how they say their alphabet?

It’s roughly how they would say them in modern Greek. alpha would be pronounced /ˈal.fa/, beta would be /ˈvi.ta/ and gamma would be /ˈɣa.ma/, due to modern Greek sound changes, but these terms are still used to refer to the letters of their alphabet today.

Based on that, I would argue that since we have anglicized the pronunciation, it’s reasonable to include them in the English lexicon.

English is like the Borg of languages. It assimilates everything in its path.

(That’s nerdspeak for Yes, I’d count them as English words.)

@raum Resistance is futile.

How fun!

Some Greek letters have become English words such as alpha, pi and omicron, but most haven’t eg rho, tau and chi. It all depends on usage.